Instead I drive miles of stop & go city streets and even more miles of freeway, delivering and picking up children, collecting groceries, attempting to work. I putter around loud, busy corridors answering unceasing questions about all sorts of topics that crowd my daughters' minds, responding to work emails, pulling dinners out of an under-tended kitchen with my fingers crossed, and wishing for clean clothes to dress everyone in tomorrow. I fall in a heap in front of a dizzying buzz of words and pictures about a world that seems increasingly senseless and arguments that are petty in the face of the mountainous terrain of the troubles they address. I hide in Pinterest dreaming up a prettier world where linens lie neatly folded in a DIY cupboard painted peony pink or vibrant yellow - oh, dear, I peeked out, and mine are waiting in a heap on the cheap faux leather chair from Ikea.
Where is this quiet expanse? In rural Pennsylvania? A Hawaiian beach? A house where the children have gone to outside to play - wait, shouldn't someone be watching them? In the new heavens and earth?
Maybe this longing is universal for moms of little kids. Maybe it is universal for people in this industrious, overbooked place I call home.
Maybe we just all need to be quiet a little everyday, and maybe a lot once every month - to think, to dream, to remember, to figure out. Maybe then, we remember why we do things and figure out if we should be doing them, and dream about how it can be different. Because I think it can be.
